Home Energy Magazine's Blog (142)

There are lots of videos about Natural Building. Sublime dialogue-free ones with just music; a favorite of mine shows step-by-step construction of a timber frame build in Finland with no dialogue, just great music, the…

“There is a detectable difference between the past and the future only when there is the flow of heat. With no heat, the future behaves exactly like the past- there is no time.” —Carlo Rovelli. Seven Brief Lessons in…

Thousands of energy models for newly constructed single family homes is a treasure trove of information if you’re like me and have a zealous obsession with cutting kilowatt-hours. As the utility company, we pay monetary incentives to builders that construct homes above an energy baseline, which in 2017 was a mixture of codes and measures from 2009 and 2015 IECC, with the overall goal of cutting peak demand and electricity consumption. The one overarching theme after reading through thousands…

A 2015 study, “Impacts of global warming on residential heating and cooling degree-days in the United States,” comparing heating degree-days (HDD), cooling degree-days (CDD), and HDD + CDD across the United States during the historical period 1981–2010 and the future period 2080–2099 predicts that New York City weather will become more like today’s Oklahoma City weather and Seattle’s will become more like present day San…

According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), there are millions of workers in the country creating homes that are more energy efficient, and safer and more comfortable to live in. In fact, the Department of Energy puts that number at more than 2-million people working for energy…

October will long be remembered in Northern California, where wildfires destroyed over 8,000 structures, killed scores, and forever changed Sonoma and Napa counties. Survivors face new threats and hazards seldom addressed in design-build magazines and chat rooms.

The Jon Siemen Memorial Scholarship has been developed to honor the life, memory, and work of Jon Siemen, who passed away in March 2015. Jon started his career in weatherization in the late 1970s, when he began working at Community Action in Southwestern Vermont (BROC). Around 1993/1994, Jon and his brother started an air sealing service that they ran for a few years. In 1996, Jon joined the Champlain Valley…

Since 2009, Connecticut utilities Eversource and United Illuminating have provided a stage for builders to compete and showcase their newly-constructed super energy-efficient homes through Energize Connecticut’s Zero Energy Challenge(ZEC).

The Challenge has kick-started a new era of home building in Connecticut. Builders…

"In a tremendously difficult economy, I found myself desiring to learn a new skill set, one that could sustain me throughout my lifetime. I would have to say that the educational resources offered through training have served to heighten the development of my vocation which parallels my passion for this…

Any way you look at it, residential electricity use in America is falling. Recent data from the Energy Information Administration show that electricity use fell 3% in total and 7% when calculated per person in the last five years. This is a lot of electricity, corresponding to a 300 kWh per year reduction per person, or about one refrigerator per home. The decline also appears to be widespread; for example, residential electricity consumption fell in 48 out of 50 states between 2010 and 2015…

Julie Michals is the Director of Clean Energy Valuation at E4TheFuture. In this role, her focus is on initiatives that improve approaches to measuring and evaluating clean energy program implementation. Prior to joining E4TheFuture, she spent 14 years with…

That was our pledge in the military and in my time as a police officer. When you retire or move on, that doesn’t go away.”

In 2014, Donnie Davis got a phone call about a local campground in southern New Jersey that was up for sale. A crazy idea popped into his head. It would require a lot of money and hard work, but it had the potential to help countless neighbors and families. Donnie decided to take a leap of faith — and change the lives of his…

At the Better Buildings By Design conference, Ann Edminster spoke about the growing interest in net-zero-energy buildings saying, “This [net-zero-energy construction] is a market opportunity. This field is going to explode.”

The energy efficiency industry in California is tangled with regulation.

Without a doubt, there are many policies that have been successful. California’s strict building codes have reduced energy use per capita and are responsible for eliminating the need to build 15-20 new power plants over the last 30 years. This is a great result and job well done.